Dying Zapatista Rebel Allowed To Travel

October 11, 1996|The New York Times

DE LAS CASAS, Mexico - — SAN CRISTOBALThe government and the Zapatista rebels have averted the collapse of peace negotiations by agreeing to allow a terminally ill guerrilla leader to go to Mexico City for a national Indian meeting.

The journey of the ailing Commander Ramona, which began on Thursday, is the first time a Zapatista rebel has received official government clearance to travel outside the southern state of Chiapas since the group's uprising in January 1994.

In an emotional news conference on Wednesday in a Zapatista stronghold in the Lacandon jungle, Subcommander Marcos, the rebels' chief political strategist, said Ramona is dying and had expressed a last wish to meet with Indian leaders from other regions.

Other rebels said Ramona, a Tzotzil Indian who whose real name was not disclosed, has kidney cancer.

The guerrillas gave her a colorful sendoff from her jungle hamlet in a large sport utility vehicle accompanied by 40 armed and masked rebels on horseback. She is to travel by road to the Chiapas coast and then fly in a government plane to Mexico City, arriving today.

After three days of hostile talks between Zapatista leaders and a team of national legislators, the safe conduct for Ramona was the only point of accord.

The government failed to persuade the Zapatistas to set a timetable for their disarmament and full return to civilian life.

The Zapatistas started the confrontation last week by insisting that high-level commanders would travel with or without official permission to the five-day conference involving 1,500 representatives from most of Mexico's 96 Indian tribes.

President Ernesto Zedillo said the trip would be a "provocation" and a violation of the law underpinning the peace talks, which suspends arrest warrants for terrorism and other charges against Zapatista leaders while the talks are under way.

Officials threatened to arrest any Zapatistas who tried to leave Chiapas without government assent. The government's approach to the Zapatistas has toughened since the emergence in June of the Popular Revolutionary Army, a separate guerrilla organization that is more radical than the Zapatistas and has shown no inclination to stop fighting.